The present invention relates to assigning roaming restrictions in a wireless environment. More particularly, the present invention relates to assigning roaming restrictions for dispatch calling, wherein a home network of a mobile station controls the roaming and feature restrictions of the mobile station, whether the mobile station is in a foreign network or the home network. The roaming and feature restrictions can be affected on the complete foreign network or specific geographical areas of the foreign network. Similarly, the roaming and feature restrictions can be applied to specific geographical areas of the home network.
Generally, operators of some communication networks have an inability to assign roaming restrictions for features in foreign networks, e.g., networks in foreign countries or in specific geographic locations. For example, in an iDEN network, such as that owned and operated by Sprint Nextel Corporation of Reston, Va., a home network of a mobile station cannot control the roaming restrictions and features of the mobile station when it is roaming from its home network in one country to a foreign network in another country or in different geographical areas of the home network.
It is the responsibility of the Home Network to authorize the mobile user when the user is roaming in foreign and/or home networks. The foreign network relies on the information about the mobile user it receives from the home network during registration or pushed by the home network, triggered by a provisioning change in the home network. Further, the foreign network might allow the mobile station to use certain calling features that it is not authorized to use in the foreign network. For example, the use of encryption technologies might be restricted by the local laws of the foreign network; and even though a visiting mobile user may have subscribed to the “encryption” feature in the home network, the feature has to be restricted while the user is in that foreign network. Inability of the home network to restrict roaming and certain features in the foreign network can result in financial losses to the home network operator due to the lost revenue collection from the mobile user (e.g., the user may claim that he/she never subscribed to roaming and hence is not responsible to pay for the use in a foreign network). Financial loss to the home operator could also be brought by lawsuits in foreign networks due to non-compliance of foreign laws. Thus, the inability of the home network to control the roaming restrictions and features for the mobile station when the mobile station is in a foreign network is a problem.